Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth
Forward
by Ansel Adams
August 20, 1960
When confidence, intuition, humor, artistry, passionate
ingenuity, and shyness function together in any one person we have an event of
considerable importance. When we add to this galaxy of attributes the
qualities of kindness and belief in the ultimate creative association of man
and nature, we have a truly extraordinary situation. Such was Cedric Wright.
He was no stylist in the usual sense of the term; he photographed and wrote
tirelessly about what he felt deeply and truly believed. He was not concerned
with the sophisticated adjustments of idea and impulse typical of the
self-conscious artists of our time. Nature spoke simply and directly to him
and he replied in similar vein. He was, in truth, an evangelist of special
persuasion and compassion.
Above the complex emotional patterns of his life --- which
centered about the kaleidoscopically active days in Berkeley and the High
Sierra --- towers an edifice of beauty and imagination, a product of an
uncompromising faith in nature and in people, things and experiences of great
diversity. His work reveals a strange and compelling beauty; it is not
obscure, oblique, mechanical, or intellectual, but is the evidence of a great
insight and intuitive power. It moves the spirit; then, because it is so
simple and direct, it moves the mind and conscience.
Twelve years my senior, Cedric Wright gave me confidence and
support in many aspects of life, love, and the pursuit of individualism. He
never "influenced" people in the ordinary sense of the term; he
affirmed and clarified all valid experience. He firmly believed that "to
know all is to forgive all." He had an uncanny awareness and distrust of
the futilities, degenerations, and opportunisms encountered so frequently in
contemporary music, graphic arts, literature, and photography. Over the years,
Wright held fast to his own dream, selecting here and there, from all art
expressions available to him, the statements necessary to the structure of his
own creative life. He never expressed doubt of suffered introspections about
the significance of his work, nor did he strive to associate it with the modes
and manners of the world about him. His esthetic and communicative codes are
to be found in Whitman, Edward Carpenter, H. G. Wells, Bach and Beethoven ---
men who thought, wrote, composed, and lived in the fresh air of imagination,
compassion, and understanding. Superficially, his philosophy may seem at times
a confusion of ethics, mysticism, and blind faith, but in the end a pattern
emerges which explains and justifies his intense creative compulsions. Elbert
Hubbard gave him in his youth a gentle but often satirical attitude toward
humanity and its manifestations of ego. Trained as a violinist, and
gravitating to photography in his middle years, he always found it difficult
to adapt himself to the configurations of formal and academic procedures.
Nevertheless, he was an excellent teacher, imparting a sense of structure and
intense emotional content, rather than expositions of conventional concepts
and style. Fritz Kreisler, as a performing artist, was his ideal, and
profoundly influenced his approach to music and photography. He had small
taste for the mere virtuoso, and little regard for mechanics and style unless
directly associated with emotional expression. His approach to photography was
almost entirely empirical, yet the scope of his work was enormous ---
landscapes and natural details, people and portraits, architecture and, as few
realize, a massive body of technical work accomplished as photographer for the
Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley during World War II. Granted his techniques
were sometimes inconsistent, his photography always carries the stamp of his
very particular personal vision.
One aspect of Wright's personality --- memorable to his
friends but extremely difficult to present out of the context of direct
experience --- was his egregious sense of humor. Frequently we discover this
humor in his photography; it exhibits a sensitive and buoyant appreciation of
the ridiculous, a rounding out of a gently applied comment on the human
characteristics of people, things, and situations. It was this quality that
provided the essential alleviations, balancing the severe and evangelical
compulsions of his philosophy and effort. He was an unconscious master of
dialect, and professed a unique concept of spelling and expressive rhetoric.
Many of his letters contain the lilt of humor and the sheer excitement of life
interest. Others are profoundly moving declarations of spirit and purpose.
Throughout all his statements runs the firm thread of personality, binding his
ideals, experiences, and friends into a pattern of comforting validity.
I write this little sketch not as a resumé of a deep,
thirty-five year friendship, or as a definitive critique of his creative
functions and accomplishment, but in the spirit of an earnest invitation to
all who read this book to give more than a pleasurable survey of this tangible
evidence of devotion and spirit. It is true that Cedric employed symbols to
explain symbols --- but what more can art in any form accomplish? The mood and
actuality of a crisp Sierra dawn over a glittering meadow should be
experienced by all our people --- living here in the shadow of the Sierra as
well as in the labyrinths of Chicago and New York. Towering granite peaks and
rolling thunderclouds over a high-mountain lake are part of our basic
heritage; many of the trapped urban millions may find it difficult to gain
direct experience of wild places, but the creative intensity of art can bring
them some of the magic and mystery and encourage them to think, to dream, and
perhaps to explore. The realities and bounties of nature are as actual as the
urban and rural realities of our society, and may be recognized as such and
accepted when experienced directly, or through some intense creative-emotional
interpretations. Cedric believed that any man's spiritual horizon would be
expanded through contact with nature, and his life was dedicated to the idea.
Many "realistic" and concrete-cultured critics
scorn and simple exposition of natural beauty and wonder. To them, man is here
to dominate the earth, not to live with it. Photographers of the hard-boiled
journalistic school (usually steeped in the juices of discontent,
disillusionment, and metropolitan survival techniques) avoid images of
intrinsic mystical quality, and might not know a songful image if they was it.
Cedric Wright was in a constant cold war with such concrete and hard-boiled
notions, and with the academic, business, and political conservatives. He had
little use for the self-protective conventional wisdom. He paid a price to
live with his convictions, but it kept his genius intact and lost him none of
the affection of his friends.
What is offered here is not merely a collection of nostalgic
and beautiful pictures and poetic text, but a profound revelation of a most
uncommon man, who, despite avalanches of problems and distractions, held fast
to the essential dream. I regret there must be a date on this work because, in
essence, it is timeless. Only the fact that it is concerned with photography
places it in the relatively narrow confines of our age. With amazing clarity
of appreciation and insight, Nancy Newhall has extracted from a tremendous
sheaf of Cedric's writings the essence of his poetic vision, and has blended
it with his photographs as equivalents of mood and meaning. And the Sierra
Club affirms its aims and achievements in presenting this book as a memorial
to one of its most illustrious spirits.
Ansel Adams
San Francisco
August 20, 1960
__________
Adams, Ansel. "Cedric Wight: Words of the
Earth." Forward. The Sierra Club,
1960, pp. 9-11.
-----
[Return to C. Wright Page]
